University College Presents 

2009 Alexander Lectures

The Uses and Abuses of Reviewing

Linda Hutcheon

University Professor of English and Comparative Literature

University of Toronto

Monday, March 23

Why Review Reviewing Today?: “No customer reviews yet. Be the first.” (Amazon.com)

Tuesday, March 24

The Review: a slender inconsequential thing” (A. Brandt) or a license to kill?

Wednesday, March 25

The Reviewer: executioner (Anon.) louse (V. Woolf) or “monarch-maker” (Byron)?

Thursday, March 26

The Reviewed: “Praise cancels blame; and blame cancels praise” (V.Woolf)?

In the age of the ubiquitous blog and the constant online invitation to be a “customer reviewer,” it is time to review the task of reviewing. The review is usually considered a secondary, even a subservient, genre, but it can also wield considerable power across all the arts and even into the academy. That power explains why any investigation into the ethics and politics of reviewing today must engage the complicated interrelations of the reviewer—either generous or with “an Itching to deride” (Pope)—and the reviewed, whether lauded or libeled.

March 23, 24, 25 & 26, 2009
4:30 p.m., Room 140, University College
15 King’s College Circle, University of Toronto. View a map.
Reception in Room 240 following lecture on March 23

Members of the faculty, staff, students and the public are cordially invited.

No registration necessary.
Call (416) 978-3160 for more information.

 About the speaker:

Linda Hutcheon holds the rank of University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. A specialist in postmodernist culture and in critical theory, on which she has published 9 books, she has also worked collaboratively in large projects involving hundreds of scholars (the multivolumed Rethinking Literary History) and smaller ones, mostly with her spouse Dr. Michael Hutcheon. The recipient of major fellowships and awards (Woodrow Wilson, Killam Research, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Connaught, Northrop Frye Award) and numerous honorary degrees, in 2000 she was elected the 117 th President of the Modern Language Association of America, the third Canadian to hold this position, and the first Canadian woman.

About the Alexander Lectures:

The Alexander Lectures were founded in 1928 in memory of Professor W.J. Alexander, Head of the Department of English at University College from 1889 to 1926. Accordingly, the subject matter of the Alexander lectures is literature. Four in number, the lectures are generally delivered on successive days.